Screensharing Changing in Chrome

Important Change That May Affect Your Customers

Google Chrome is considered a very secure browser. To further improve its security, inline installation of the screensharing extension for Chrome is beingdeprecated. The timeline provided by Google is as follows:

"Starting September 12, 2018, inline installation will be disabled for existing extensions, and users will be automatically redirected to the Chrome Web Store to complete the installation."

"In early December 2018, the inline install API method will be removed from Chrome 71."

Google is working on implementing the getDisplayMedia() approach for screensharing in Chrome so an extension won't be needed. We suggest you read these pages to learn more about the changes:

What Does This Mean to My Customers?

For now, there will be no impact to your customers. In fact, if you're using a version of Chrome 70 or earlier, and using TokBox JS SDK 2.14 or earlier, there won't be any difference. You're users will be able to install your screensharing extension inline.

After September 12, if you do nothing to update your own app and only update your TokBox JS SDK per your typical update plan, the worst that will happen is that your customer will have to navigate to the Chrome store to find, download, install your screensharing extension before they can share their screen.

Two things will happen before your users will begin to be affected:

Your user upgrades to Chrome 71 and has to go to the Chrome store to download the extension before sharing their screen.

TokBox will update its JS SDK to support Chrome's implementation of getDisplayMedia() and thus obviate the need for an extension.

Since you probably care about your user experience, you'll want to leverage changes to the TokBox SDK to support an effective, friction-free UX.

What TokBox Will Do

We intend to share what we're doing to update our platform, what you can do, and what you should do to prepare your business. We will update our JS SDK to support Chrome's implementation. We're evaluating the need to patch existing JS SDKs. We'll communicate changes through this page, our blog, and email.

What Can You Do?

Here are a few things you can do:

Familiarize yourself with proposed changes using the links above about Google's intention.

Subscribe to changes on this page as we provide more information, sample code, and guidance.